About Face poem – Alice Fulton

Because life’s too short to blush,

I keep my blood tucked in.

I won’t be mortified

by what I drive or the flaccid

vivacity of my last dinner party.

I take my cue from statues posing only

in their shoulder pads of snow: all January

you can see them working on their granite tans.

That I woke at an ungainly hour,

stripped of the merchandise that clothed me,

distilled to pure suchness,

means not enough to anyone for me

to confess. I do not suffer

from the excess of taste

that spells embarrassment:

mothers who find their kids unseemly

in their condom earrings,

girls cringing to think

they could be frumpish as their mothers.

Though the late nonerotic Elvis

in his studded gut of jumpsuit

made everybody squeamish, I admit.

Rule one: the King must not elicit pity.

Was the audience afraid of being tainted

–this might rub off on me–

or were they–surrendering–

what a femme word–feeling

solicitous–glimpsing their fragility

in his reversible purples

and unwholesome goldish chains?

At least embarrassment is not an imitation.

It’s intimacy for beginners,

the orgasm no one cares to fake.

I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise.

Copyright ©: 
Alice Fulton

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• Dark Wood, Dark Water by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Dark House by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Danse Macabre by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Cut by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Crystal Gazer by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Contusion by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Cinderella by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Childless Woman by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Child by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Channel Crossing by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Candles by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Bucolics by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Brasilia by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
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• Aquatic Nocturne by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
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